I'm back from a fantastic trip to Greece researching the world of Atalanta, Jason and the Argonauts for book 2 of the Golden Apple trilogy (see more on my trip to Greece here). Now that I'm in one place for a while, I thought I should get to grips with one aspect of my second book that's hugely important for my heroine: archery.​

​For those of you who may not have heard of Atalanta (and she's a sorely neglected figure – one of the reasons I'm telling her story), she was known in ancient myth as the fastest runner alive and an incredible archer. She was brought up on the slopes of Mount Pelion and taught herself to hunt; she participated in the legendary Calydonian boar hunt, and was the first to wound the boar. And, according to one classical source, she so excelled in her fighting skills that she even took part in the mythical voyage of Jason and the Argonauts for the Golden Fleece – the only woman to join the heroes Jason, Theseus and Hercules on their quest.

I have been writing many scenes in For the Winnerin which Atalanta hunts and fights with her bow; but to convey the sheer familiarity she would have had with her weapon, I felt I had to get comfortable with using a bow myself. Luckily, I don't live too far away from the Harvard Archery club; and so I signed myself up for a couple of archery classes, to try to learn to wield a bow as Atalanta did.

One of the first things I learnt about archery was that it's not as easy as it looks. An arrow doesn't fly in a straight course towards the target, since it loses momentum and drops with gravity as it flies – so you have to aim a little up from your target, making it very difficult (at least for a beginner like me) to be accurate. It's also extremely tiring: by the time I was finished, my right arm was aching and my fingers were sore.

But it's also a lot of fun, and, in a way, meditative. You have to be entirely focused if you want to get everything right (as my instructors kept telling me!): remembering your posture, keeping your elbow close, stretching the bowstring back just the right amount, and of course, aiming with an eye to your distance from the target. Imagining using a bow in a thickly wooded mountain environment, as Atalanta would have done, against a fast-moving target, gave me a huge amount of respect for the amount of skill involved; and it also allowed me to feel that much closer to my warrior heroine. I've included a couple of pictures below: feel free to leave questions/responses in the comments!